And all he ever wanted was to be Captain of Football

Share via

English judicial memoirs are rarely a good read. They reheat court victories long-forgotten by everyone else, describing (in painful detail) the clever submission or penetrating cross-examination that secured an undeserved forensic triumph. They identify the otherwise unnoticed contribution made to jurisprudence by the author’s dissenting judgments. And they settle old scores with rival learned “friends”, judicial “brethren”, clerks, instructing solicitors, ex-wives, and anyone else who has found their arguments unpersuasive.

In As Far As I Remember (Hart Publishing, £22.50), Michael Kerr, a Lord Justice of Appeal who died earlier this year, describes how as a young barrister he met Cecil